


for two minutes, fifteen seconds

by remembermyfic



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - College/University, Cheerleaders, F/M, sexy implications that make the rating a cautious choice, with apologies to Gostisbehere
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28419654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/remembermyfic/pseuds/remembermyfic
Summary: “Have you heard?”Jack is absolutely not awake or coherent enough for Noah’s riddles. It’s ass o’clock in the morning and yeah, okay fine, Jack’s a little hungover. Nothing practice and a gallon of water won’t fix. “Heard what?”“Your flyer is back.”Jack does not move. He does not flinch. He does nothing but pull the Jeep into traffic, same as he would as soon as he heard the click of Noah’s seatbelt. “She’s not my flyer.”
Relationships: Jack Eichel/Connor McDavid
Comments: 6
Kudos: 95





	for two minutes, fifteen seconds

**Author's Note:**

> If you know them, maybe don't read this. 
> 
> I'd like to thank Netflix's Cheer and K's constant back and forth for the existence of this fic.

“Have you heard?”

Jack is absolutely not awake or coherent enough for Noah’s riddles. It’s ass o’clock in the morning and yeah, okay fine, Jack’s a little hungover. Nothing practice and a gallon of water won’t fix. “Heard what?”

“Your flyer is back.”

Jack does not move. He does not flinch. He does nothing but pull the Jeep into traffic, same as he would as soon as he heard the click of Noah’s seatbelt. “She’s not my flyer.”

“Come on, man. It’s me.” But Noah also knows how true Jack’s statement is. Connor McDavid is not Jack’s and both of them would very much like the squad to remember that.

“She’s back?”

There’s a moment of silence that Jack knows is Noah waggling his eyebrows. How the dude gets laid is beyond Jack. “You didn’t check the chat this morning.”

“When have you known me to check the chat before practice?”

Noah holds out his phone at a red light.

_ Davo says: _

_ Back tomorrow. Y’all better not have slacked off while I was gone. Tell Eichel to bring his A game _ .

He snorts. He always brings his A game. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be tossing the squad’s top flyer. Hell, he wouldn’t have been tossing her for three previous years either. Flyers like Connor are extraordinarily rare and Jack knows what it means to be the only consistent stunter in her cheer career.

“About damn time.”

“Daytona’s two and a half months out. Think she can learn it?”

Jack snorts. Whatever is between him and Connor the one thing he does not hesitate on is her dedication and her ability. “She probably already has.”

“I never thought I’d miss partner stretches.”

Connor rolls her eyes, even as Dylan leans a little further into the hamstring stretch. It’s not her hamstring that needs stretching, but she knows for a fact stretching her collarbone really isn’t possible. She knows from experience too.

“It’s our time to bond! Davo!”

She laughs, a little breathy because the stretch shifts and hurts just right. She’s loath to think of what her splits are going to be like, even though she definitely did them while out.

It’s been a long recovery.

Which is right about the time Jack Eichel steps through the door, still looking as strong as ever. Good. She’s not about to get injured again. Not that it was his fault. Jack’s never dropped her.

He glances around the room and she knows with instinct born of so many competitions and years together that he’s looking for her. Noah would have told him. She was relying on Noah to tell him. Athletes are athletes and she knows he doesn’t check his phone before morning practice. She’d banked on it.

Their eyes meet across the gym and Connor isn’t going to pretend it isn’t a relief. She rolls her shoulders back as Dylan puts her down, peripherally aware of him as she always is right before practice. Then it’s tumbling warm ups and Connor’s a little busy trying to focus to think about much else. It feels weirdly like they’re dancing around each other until their coach, MP, calls them together.

“As you can see, Davo’s back with us.”

Her smile is involuntary and entirely genuine. Steph squeezes her hand on one side and nudges her into Jack on the other. Jack doesn’t move, solid as ever and it’s maybe the most reassuring part of the whole thing.

Either that, or the way he grips her hips before she goes to try her first stunt in three months, the way her hands fall to his forearms to anchor herself.

“Gonna hit?”

Connor lets her smile get cocky, both because she feels like it and because she feels like he needs to see it. “Like I was never gone.”

They’re not friends. Dylan is her friend. Alex is her friend. The people she watches trashy reality television with, gossips with, those are her friends.

But.

Jack had been the one to show up at her door with all of her missed class materials, that had made himself comfortable on the end of her bed and filled in her online quizzes with her while she was in a sling. He’d been her writing hand those first few days when she could barely think, let alone put together a coherent sentence.

She’s not sure what it says about them or what it means that they still study together.

“You have to have the veto,” Jack argues in the quiet of the study hall.

“You literally wrote an entire paper last semester slamming the veto and calling it the most disruptive thing to international security,” Connor murmurs absently. She vividly remembers that argument back then too, when he was still unsure of which side he wanted to argue.

“It is, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t necessary.”

She has thirty epidemiology slides to go through before practice in an hour, but the tone of his voice says he’s not willing to let it go. He’s going to owe her study time later if she’s going to entertain him now. “Why?”

And sure enough, he’s off, rambling about winning and Allies and victors in battle. There’s a tangent in there about international influence and colonialism and Canada’s peacekeeping versus America’s military might. It carries through his alarm he’d set to make sure they weren’t late to practice, and even through the drive to the practice facility.

“How long?” Noah murmurs when he falls into step with them, right around the time Jack’s recounting World War II history, holy crap.

“An hour and change,” she replies and rolls her eyes. “Get his head on straight before we start throwing.”

Noah doesn’t, he can’t, so Connor grips Jack by the forearms before MP counts them in. Jack stops, mid-sentence, his hands on her hips already tense to throw. “You owe me thirty slides of epidemiology tonight.”

“I hate diagnostics.”

Connor sucks in a breath at the count. “Remember that next time you want to argue about colonialism for forty-five minutes.”

Jack tosses her up. Six, seven, hands, one. Twitch in his left that says she needs to overcorrect to the right and balance, leg up. Tap to the ankle, and push, and down. Clap.

“Good, that was good,” MP calls out. “Davo, you’re clean. Brinks, let's do it again, get in the reps.”

“You bring dinner,” he says between heavy breaths as she curves to stretch out her obliques. Cheering’s hell on her ribs.

“It’ll be Thai.” She’s been craving it.

“Fine. Baskets?”

She considers for a moment, then nods. “Baskets.”

The thing is, the first half of the year is baby food compared to the run up to Daytona. Months and months of prep for two minutes and fifteen seconds on the mat – two minutes and fifteen seconds of the most adrenaline fueled thrilling memories that no one can never actually remember. It’s always a blur.

The aftermath, however, rarely is.

Last year more than ever.

They’d crashed into the ocean, victorious once again because Connor and Jack don’t know how to lose, and neither does a minimum of eighty percent of the squad. Somewhere in those moments, Jack remembers meeting Connor’s eyes, her hair soaked in ribbons over her shoulders, the black and orange of their cheer uniforms clinging to his every curve. He remembers the shiver that passed through him, the way they gravitated together all night until they’d gravitated to his hotel room, still laughing and joyous.

A one-time Daytona thing.

It had changed a lot of things. Almost as many things as her broken collarbone. They both stopped pretending to hate each other, neither of them willing to be cowed by any embarrassment the morning after.

They’d done what they’d done, and now, they’re set to do it again. It’s fine.

Except. Connor is chewing on her lip, and he knows her well enough to know there’s something significant going on in that head of hers. He’d bet his tuition that it’s not about the diagram of the nervous system in front of her, either. Her eyes are glazed. “I can smell burning.”

She rolls her eyes before she says: “Remember when we won last year?”

Her hand light and brief on his wrist. It stops him dead. Again, it’s not like he’s forgotten it - how electric she’d been around him after the win, in the ocean, beneath him in their Daytona hotel. He still gets off to the sound she’d made when he ripped her team top over her head and the way she’d trembled through her orgasm.

“We win, we do it again.”

Jack barely moves, an instinctive shift towards her. The look that transforms Connor’s face says she saw it. “Why?”

“I want to,” she answers, like it’s that easy and it really, really isn’t. Half the time he isn’t sure she likes him. The other half, he isn’t sure he likes her. “And I don’t get to choose much.”

He can’t help the eyebrow that wings up. He probably knows better than anyone how much she chooses. Or more accurately, how much she doesn’t. “And you’re choosing me?”

“Yeah,” she says, and he feels the way her hands clench his tank top in her fists. It’s right against his abs and yeah, his body responds. He hadn’t even realized she’d come so close.

It makes her smile, sharp in the way that he likes too much. “You in?”

This is the version of her that is incandescent, the one that looks at him over her shoulder when they nail a stunt with no deductions. He smirks back, a reflex and instinct - Pavlovian response.

It’s hard not to want her like this.

“I’m in.”

Connor’s face doesn’t change, but she still surprises him when she slips in close and he feels her mouth, a ghost of a kiss against his late-night stubble. “Good.”

Connor storms off the mat and Jack looks heavenward. He knows, he gets it, he knows exactly why she’s throwing a tantrum right now. He sees it and glances at MP. She looks just as frustrated.

“Five minutes,” she yells. “Get water.”

Jack waits just long enough to see her heading to Shane before he heads after Connor.

“Good luck,” Dylan offers him on the way by.

“Why is it not you, again?”

But Jack pushes through, finds Connor against the wall. Her arms are braced against it, her head folded into them, her body shaking as she cries.

“He’s dropping the stunt.”

“He’s not hitting the basket!” Connor explodes. “He’s damn lucky Brinks is so tiny or she’d be on the floor with who knows what injury. But she’s not doing anything.”

“We need him.”

Connor sends him a withering look, but, Jack thinks, at least she’s standing now. “MP can choreograph around it. I’d rather do that and risk it than lose because one of us wasn’t giving their all.”

“McDavid, you’re in here crying about it.”

Her inhale shakes. Her exhale does too, but when she looks at him, her gaze is hard. This is why he goes after her. This is why it’s not Dylan. Connor doesn’t need to be coddled and never has. “I can’t keep working like this if we’re not going to win.” She yanks the elastic out of her hair. “I am running myself ragged.”

“I know.” Better than most. A constant refrain in his life. He’s not much better, all things considered, though he doesn’t have the same brand recognition as Connor McDavid. “So pull it together and let’s go out there and nail this.”

She doesn’t move. Instead, she puts her hands on her hips and drops her head, her hair falling in a curtain around her face. Hiding. Connor doesn’t hide.

He huffs. “This is time we don’t have.”

“It’s how my collarbone broke.”

If she hadn’t had his whole attention before, she definitely does now. “What?”

Jack hadn’t been there, at the time. All Noah had told him was they were rushing Connor to the hospital. They hadn’t caught her.

“I was in the air,” she explained to him in the hospital, high as a kite when he’d managed to get in to see her. “And then I wasn’t anymore.”

He’d never managed to get the specifics.

“He was in your place for that basket. Easy flip for me, but I didn’t land. Jammed my shoulder into the floor when I came down. The force of it broke my collarbone.”

Jack sees red.

“His effort’s been off all year and nearly cost me my season.” Her smile is an ugly thing, the kind he doesn’t want to call a smile. He reaches for her unthinkingly and yanks her in, hugs her tight despite the fact that they’re so sweaty and they don’t hug.

Until she broke her collarbone. It’s kind of embarrassing to think about how tactile they’ve grown. Sure, they’re all tactile, they’re cheerleaders; before Connor’s broken collarbone, they hadn’t touched much more than was required for cheer. Now she reaches for him, smacks him, and he tugs on her ponytail to get her attention, to tease. It makes him think of their Daytona deal and how winning is so much more important this time, now that he knows she’s waiting on the other side.

“MP was going to talk to him when I came in here, but If he’s still on the mat at the end of practice, we’ll talk to her. If Brinks goes down, Daytona does too.”

She nods into his shoulder, right when MP opens the door.

“Good?”

Connor steps away from him and he refuses to even think about the cold air that rushes in to take her place. “Good.”

MP glances between them, then nods. “Full out, from the top. Ivan’s in for Shane.”

Jack pretends he doesn’t see Connor sag in relief.

Hell Week is everything it sounds like and then some. Jack’s been through a couple now - this is his last one - and all of the training and consistency in the world never seems to be enough to help him.

“Everyone’s on vacation,” Casey whines as they’re stretching. They’ll make the walk down to the mat in a minute, the same way they will in Daytona. Practicing every tiny step is part of MP’s coaching. “It’s spring break.”

“You signed up for this,” Kailer replies, flipping her long hair over her shoulder. She has to be sweating more than Casey, given the fact that the girls are sporting the half-up-half-down-all-curls style that Jack associates almost solely with cheer.

He’s about to open his mouth, to remind Casey what they’re doing here, when a slim hand slips into his. Connor’s there, steady and sure, the same way she will be when they walk onto the championship mats.

Her hand will feel the same in his when he raises it in triumph and when he presses it into the bed. He knows both of those things from experience.

There isn’t much he wouldn’t do to experience them again.

Daytona is insane.

She tried to explain it to Cam once, back home after the thrill of winning, and hadn’t been able to come close. She’d tried using his hockey tournaments, but those aren’t the national scale. This is…

This is something else entirely.

The sound of the crowd, the way she can barely move, the way Dylan carves the path for her, and for Mitchy behind her. Jack’s somewhere behind, Connor feels weirdly tuned toward him.

Daytona.

“What do you think, Davo?” Dylan says, and his eyes are shining. They live for this moment, each and every one of them. They haven’t put blood, sweat, tears and broken bones into this to come up anything short of champions.

“It’ll do.”

Dylan’s smile is sharp. He’s a drama queen, but when the chips are down she knows he’s steady and true. “That ocean’s going to feel real nice when we win.”

“Now you’ve jinxed it.”

Except neither of them really believe in superstition. In routine, sure. In preparation, of course. But no magic will win them a competition. No magic ever has. Connor glances back, over Mitchy’s head and finds Jack’s blue eyes. There’s nothing in them but the thrill of this, the anticipation of what’s to come. It won’t be long now until they’re out there, cheering for the rights of saying they’re the best.

Just two minutes and fifteen seconds to lay it all out on the line.

And win.

Two minutes and fifteen seconds.

It’s a blur. Every single moment of it. It’s muscle memory - a routine they’ve done so many times he could quite literally do it in his sleep, he’s sure. He’s not sure he breathes, is twice as unsure when they all stumble off the mat, a mess and dehydrated in the humidity of May in Florida.

“Fuck,” he hears in his ear, and there’s a slim body pressed against his back. “Fuck, Jack.”

Connor’s in his arms a second later, sweaty and shaking. “Water.”

“Yeah,” she agrees. “Jesus. Hit zero.”

“Must have, at least,” he agrees, at least between the two of them. Not a single deduction. He’ll have to get his shoulder looked at and he thinks he saw her cradling her knee, but they’ve done it.

They’ve actually done it.

Champions.

Again. Still. Forever. God, Jack doesn’t even care.

He crashes into the water, finds Connor without looking because that’s how it is. Oriented, focused, true north. She’d laugh at the last one and make a crack about Canada, if he ever tells her. He won’t. He can’t.

There’s saltwater everywhere and he’s soaked through, but even wet Connor’s still so easy to lift. She cries out, ecstatic and beyond anything his fantasies could ever make up. There’s very little in the world like winning and there’s nothing like winning with her.

“We won,” she says as he sets her into the sand. The breathless quality to her voice wraps around him like a siren’s song. “Jack.”

“If you doubted-”

“Never,” she promises him, and for a fleeting moment, her hands are on his cheeks, cupping his face. For that same fleeting moment, Jack thinks about what it would be like to kiss her, right here, in front of everyone.

He doesn’t.

He tells himself he doesn’t see disappointment in her gaze.

He kisses her later, behind the closed door of his hotel room. He kisses her and kisses her and her hands slip under the t-shirt he’d thrown on. They stroke his back, his chest, shuck his sweatpants to the ground long before he thinks they need to be there. She’s in a rush - adrenaline or something else, and he tries to slow her down with his hands, his body, his kiss.

He ends up having to pin her hands to the mattress before things end too quickly. Even then, it’s the first time in a year and his brain can remember every roll of her hips, every arch of her spine. It’s no less amazing the second time around.

God, he wants to do it again and again and again and even-

“Maybe,” he says, when she’s curled against his side. “Maybe we should do this outside of Daytona.”

She doesn’t change. There isn’t a single shift of any expression on her face and that is terrifying. Her hand comes up, fingertips feather light over his cheek. “You think we can?”

“We do.”

And that’s it, isn’t it? Teasing, studying, eating, training, snarking, practicing… it always comes back to her. It always comes back to them.

“It’s a cliche.”

“Never in my life have I given a shit about that.”

She snorts because she knows it to be fact. Unequivocally true. “We could try it,” she finally says.

“Baby,” and he ignores the smack she bestows up on his shoulder. “We never just try.”

They do.

They succeed.

They win.

And yeah, it’s cheesy as hell and he’ll never repeat it aloud, but they seem to do that best when they do it together.

  
  



End file.
